I own a dell G5 5000 and this past month it has been on a steady decline of not fully turning on. As of writing its been about 2 days since I was last able to boot into windows but I have been dealing with this issue for the past month. I dont know the proper term for this, but i think its failing the POST test. I just wanna say now that I am not really knowledgeable on PCS but I have been trying my best to find a solution to this myself but I havent found anything that works long term and its driving me mad ha ha. Any help is really appreciated!! and im sorry if this seems too long -_-' Its just that I want to be as clear as possible what ive tried, whats going on, and the behavior i noticed to avoid any confusion.

Here is the issue:

white power button light turns on along with CPU and all fans. Typically I receive no POST codes(more on that later in odd behavior) and the white light stays a consistent white light when powered on. Peripherals turn on, keyboard CAPS light turns on when pressed, mouse light on etc, and access to hard-drive indication light does its usual flickering. If i plug in a USB my USB flickers as if its being accessed. However I get no input on monitor. Not a black screen, just 0 input.

What I have tried:

taking out the CMOS battery, waiting, placing back in. Re-seating all of my RAM sticks, ( I have two additional ones installed in companion to the original it came with). Taking out each stick and trying one at a time, all in all four of my slots. Booting into recovery mode, this has not worked since 2 days ago. Booting into BIOS, I cant boot into anything currently and now will occasionally crash my PC if attempted. Hard resetting(i think its called) where i unplug the power cord, CMOS batter, hold down the power button for 60 seconds wait about five minutes then plug everything back on and boot, does not work. I have tested my HDMI cable on my laptop to make sure its functioning, it is. I've also tried ctrl + windows key+ shift + b to refresh my GPU but this does not work unless im waking it up from sleep mode/it was able to boot into windows before hand. When I was able to boot into recovery I have tried dells support assistant diagnostic tests and nothing came up in all of them, the self repair stated everything was good, essentially it had nothing bad to say in all of these tests.

Additional odd behavior:

I use two monitors one a ROKU tv and the other an old DELL monitor that still uses those old pin cords, sorry I dont recall the cable name VGA i think? When idle my monitor will go into an idle screen but when the PC turns on/off it will wake up and wait for input, but of course detect none.

Occasionally when turning on the PC wont stay on and will turn off by itself before turning back on. Sometimes it does this once, sometimes it does it until I interrupt it by turning it off myself or unplugging the power cord. Sometimes it doesn't do it at all. Since the last time I have been able to boot into windows, when attempting to boot into BIOS or the one time BIOS menu, the computer will turn off. This doesn't happen all the time though and I can't get it to reliably happen. It kind of sounds like boot cycling but what makes it odd to me that it doesnt happen all the time. But maybe thats common in this situation?

2 days ago I was able to boot into windows through a miracle. I had just pressed and held down my pc until it turned off and on 3 times without releasing the button. On the third time my PC light blinked four times before going a steady white. Nothing had happened and as I was doing something else, maybe a minute or so later the DELL logo popped up and before i could go into BIOS windows popped up. Attempting this method again leads to the white light to only blink twice before not turning on again. A day later I turned off my PC again to redo some tests and got a weird post code, which has not happened before. Oddly my PC power light blinked alongside my keyboard. Both were blinking the same pattern, except my power button since it only has one light. It was blinking this pattern in amber (comma indicates a pause between blinking patterns):

3 very rapid blinks, 3 steady blinks, 3 steady blinks,(longer pause then others) one blink

they keyboard followed a similar pattern except on the rapid blinks the lights filled from left to right before reversing, like tapping your fingers in succesion of each other without lifting them after tapping them to the table kind of? I took a video of both if anybody is interested. I have not gotten another POST code before or since.

The decline of my PC:

This past month it started as not booting, and resetting the CMOS would work. and at increasing rates this would not work and I would soon try all of the methods above, each working at first then declining in succession. Eventually my pc would only turn on in recovery mode after trying everything else then attempting recovery, that became inconsistent before not working at all. Like i mentioned before it randomly worked one last time but I'm not sure that I am going to get it operational again. I honestly don't know what else to do at this point as it feels like I've exhausted all my options.

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Is there anything else I can try,? Initially when I first started I was thinking it would was a PSU problem but i have no idea how to do the paper clip test as my cables are not the typical 24 pin and has 3 separate connections to the motherboard, so I have no idea how to test it. I also have no other clue what tests I can do, at this point should i just get a technician? I'd like to avoid it at all costs as I am saving for college and kind of broke but google just has me chasing my tail at this point. Again I really appreciate any help! And if you took the time to read this thank you so much.

Sandra Lite

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